Government Personnel

Sources

System of Sponsorship. To find suitable candidates for public service, the Tang court created a system of sponsorship allowing certain senior officials to nominate family members for governmental appointment. This method of recruitment was justified by a saying of Confucius: “Raise to office those of virtue and talent whom you know.” The sponsorship system emphasized character, and the official had to guarantee the candidate’s ability when nominating him.

Song Personnel Administration. Personnel administration in the Song dynasty (960-1279) generally developed in the patterns created during the Tang dynasty (618-907). The Tang requirement of sponsorship inevitably favored the influential families. To recruit the right type of personnel for the bureaucracy, the Song court tried to make the system of personnel administration more open by building state-supported schools in the prefectures, by abolishing the monopoly on entrance to the national university (which sons of officials had enjoyed since Tang times), and by giving competitive prelimi-nary examinations at the prefectural level. Obviously, the examination system had the potential to produce more clever candidates than the system of sponsorship.

Reform of Examinations. The system of civil service examinations was the most prestigious means of government recruitment. The Tang court created a system of annual examinations, which led to the award of a variety of degrees to a small number of successful candidates. The Song court modified the system by incorporating prefecrural examinations, establishing quotas to determine how many candidates should pass at the prefectural level, and providing provisions for impartiality. For example, to prevent a reader from recognizing the author of any paper by his calligraphy, all papers of candidates were identified only by number and were copied by clerks before being submitted for grading. Success in the examination was difficult, requiring a thorough command of the classics. Candidates had to identify well-known lines, the most obscure passages, and even sequences of characters. Competition was rough, and preparing for and taking the examinations became a way of life for many persons in Song times.

New Schools. Schools supported by the state had existed since the Tang dynasty, both in the capital and in the prefectures, but provisioning for them was limited. To improve educational facilities, Song local officials began to build new schools and to provide them with a set of the Confucian classics, which were available in print at that time. At the capital, the Imperial University, which had originally been reserved for children of officials, was opened to prefectural candidates.

Ming School System. Since the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) did not inherit from the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) a pool of experienced and reputable officials, he depended primarily on recommendations to staff his government. Much more successfully than his Song predecessors, he set up a state-supported school in every city and county and set a quota of state-supported students for each school. From these schools, some honor students, known as tribute students,

were summoned to the capital to continue their studies. While studying as national university students, they continued to work as apprentice officials. After finishing their studies, they were appointed as regular officials. Since the examination-recruitment system was renewed in the fifteenth century, the degree-holders produced by this system, as during the Song period, once again became the bureaucratic elite. By that time the national university had an enrollment often thousand students, many of whom wanted to have a prestigious examination degree before direct appointment as regular officials. In the meantime private academies spread throughout the empire and played an important role in supplementing the state school system, expanding the supply of educated men and promoting wide-spread literacy. Obviously, the Ming dynasty created China’s most extensive system of public education to produce men worthy of official appointment.

Cultivated Talents. In the Ming examination system, the potential degree holder had to pass three major examinations in order to take a final Song-style palace examination. Provincial education intendants conducted the first examination, a basic certification test, at regular intervals. The intendants certified candidates as competent students known as xiucai (cultivated talents). Xiucai were entitled to wear distinctive caps and sashes and were exempted from state labor service. They generally served as tutors in rich families and naturally became community leaders. However, they were subject to periodic reexamination and could be deprived of their status, privileges, and prestige if they did not sustain their scholastic competence or behaved improperly.

Elevated Men. All xiucai were eligible to take provincial examinations given every third year at the provincial capitals in three daylong sessions. This provincial examination required a general understanding of the classics and history, the capability to link classical precepts and historical precedents to general philosophical principles or particular political issues, and proficiency in literary composition. Those who passed this examination became juren (elevated men) and were entitled to more honors and privileges. Their status was permanent, and they could be appointed as lower-level officials.

Presented Scholars. All juren were eligible to take the metropolitan examination on similar subject matter at the national capital; the test was conducted a few months after the provincial examination. Successful candidates became Jinshi (presented scholars), and the subsequent palace examination served to rank them. The highest-ranking Jinshi were appointed to the Hanlin Academy (national academy) and were expected to rise eventually into the Grand Secretariat. They were highly praised as national heroes, similar to sports figures in the present-day United States. Other new Jinshi would be appointed to county magistracies or posts of provincial governments when vacancies occurred.

Intense Competition. The examination in Ming times was more competitive than in Song times. The number of provincial juren degrees awarded each examination year was about 1,200, md Jinshi degrees were approximately 120 per examination

In other words, less than 10 percent of xiucai became juren, and less than 10 percent of juren advanced to Jinshi.

Quotas System. The Song examination system, without any prescribed geographical quotas, produced a less representative civil service than the recommendation system of Tang, because there were more scholars in the southeast than in other regions. When restoring examinations in 1315, the Yuan government attempted to maintain regional balance by setting limits on the number of candidates from each province who would take the metropolitan examination in any year. Ethnic considerations also encouraged the Yuan government to create equal quotas for four categories of examination candidates: Mongols; central Asians; northern Chinese; and southern Chinese, who comprised perhaps 75 percent of the total population of Yuan. With limits on the number of juren degrees that could be awarded in each province at any one time, southerners became disproportionately successful in the metropolitan examinations. For example, southerners took all the Jinshi degrees in 1397. Irritated by this situation, the emperor Taizu, a northerner, executed the chief examiner for favoritism, repealed all the new degrees, and chose a list of northern graduates. Thereafter, examiners were more careful, but grading standards still favored southerners. In the 1420s, for example, strict objectivity was abolished in favor of a regional quotas system. As a result, southern candidates were allowed to take only 55 percent ofjinshi degrees in each examination, westerners 10 percent, and northerners 35 percent.

Eight-Legged Essay. In the late Ming period the intellectual quality of examination graduates decreased. In the examination, candidates had to use only classical explanations approved by the Zhu Xi school of neo-Confucianism; abnormal interpretations of the classics were regarded as unorthodox. Because of this requirement, free thought was suppressed. In addition, a standard rhetorical form known as the “eight-legged essay” was required. Test essays were written in an eight-part structure. Examiners considered the form of essay more important than the content of it. As a result, students became more interested in the rhetorical structure of an essay than any ideas it contained. Handbooks on the writing of eight-legged essays became popular. Later, the examiners even graded answers mainly on the basis of calligraphy, not paying attention to intellectual content or rhetorical form. As a result, the quality of the examination degenerated.